By Ana Milena Ordosgoitia / Maritza Diaz | Project Leader
Efren is 61 years old. He was borne in Baru and to him the Ocean is his everything.
His connection with the Sea started when we was a little boy and he used to swim in the access canals to Baru, were he watched the boats go in and out and he dreamed of being a Captain.
When Efren’s mother asked him to go with her to Cartagena, he couldn’t sleep waiting for the next day to come so that he could go on boat.
Efren never forgot about his dream. When he was 19, he started working in a farm close to his town. When he had saved enough money to buy wood and a motor, he resigned and invested all his savings in building a canoe, with his father’s help.
Since then, Efren has sailed the Caribbean Sea for 40 years, transporting natives and visitors to Cartagena, the Rosario Islands and White Beach. Because of his job, he has been able to race his 9 children.
Along these 40 years, Efren has had different canoes to transport between 10 and 15 passengers. It was only 13 years ago that he could buy his first fiberglass boat which he named “Qué qué” or “What what”. Now he can transport 30 people.
Thanks to the microcredit Efren got with the project, he was able to renew all the life vests of the boat and for the first time buy children life vests.
Efren aims to keep working towards providing a better service to his clients and to keep living with the calm and the freedom that, in his own words, “only the Sea can give you”.
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